At 12:37 PM 7/21/97 -0700, Allen Thomson wrote: > Analytical Graphics has decided to begin giving away its flagship product, > the Satellite Tool Kit software. The software has thousands of features >Getitgetitgetit! Yeah, yeah yeah ...... Now for the bad news ..... 1 - The download expands into a total of some 28 MB of files etc etc 2 - Even though they are giving away the software, they are a bit more stingy with the passwords needed to actually run the software once you have it, and given their previously small installed customer base, the process for getting the dang passwords and setting up the app so you can run it a second time are less than transparent..... not entirely opaque, but there is a bit of noodling required to get the thing fired up and such ... [hint: register by email, since the WWW registration doesn't seem to actually work or even function]. 3 - Though I have not inspected the specs, I am guessing that this thing was designed to run on a 500MHz Alpha with 128 MB RAM, since within a few minutes I was easily able to set the thing working on a problem that clobbered my feeble 100MHz Pentium w/ 32MB RAM. 4 - The thing is so powerfully featured that it is kinda obscure as to just what it is supposed to *do*, but the gist of it seems to be that one can design space/ground architectures [aka "scenarios"], and then set the critters running to see just what they want to do. It seems that one could spend a powerful amount of time just building a baseline "scenario" [that it, entering all the data for the existing satellite tracking network, LPARs, etc]. That is to say, if someone has already built this "scenario" I would sure like to borrow a copy, and if this is not commonly available, I guess I will build my own copy and put it on our WWW for download etc 5 - I am guessing that they are giving away the software so they can rake in the bucks with courseware teaching folks how to use the dang thing, since the claim that the "software has thousands of features" is no joke .... this is one industrial piece of software that looks like it would take some serious training/practice to really make it do interesting things.... even though in the absence of such training it does look like one could waste considerable hours playing it as a really fancy version of Space Invaders or somethin .... 6 - This most surely ain't what one needs to go out into the ole back yard to take a peak at Mir, since it is mainly oriented towards contemplating space systems that one might like to build, rather than actually looking at systems that have been built [tho see #4]. BUT, there is no way around it ... STK is most assuredly the absolute state of the art in the field, and I have been drooling over the thing for years now, though never quite able to pop for the kilobuck plus pricetag, so all these gripes aside, I got my copy and will be struggling to extract some functionality from it over the next few weeks or so, so wish us luck .... @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ John Pike Federation of American Scientists 307 Massachusetts Ave. NE Washington, DC 20002 V 202-675-1023, F 202-675-1024, http://www.fas.org/spp/